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Education and Workforce

There is a significant need to train behavioral health and primary care clinicians to work together as teams.

An estimated 26 percent of patients seen in primary care meet criteria for a mental disorder1; however, according to a large national sample survey (n = 9,282), only 41 percent of people with mental disorders received any form of treatment in the preceding year2. And while more of these people received treatment in primary care than in any other setting, the treatment provided in the primary care setting met minimal adequacy standards only 13 percent of the time.

Neither the professional workforce nor the system of structuring and paying for care is adequate to address the need for behavioral health services in the United States3. However, multiple studies suggest that collaboration between medical and behavioral health providers improves patient outcomes and satisfaction4,5.

Since our traditional educational and training paradigm has not focused on collaboration and a comprehensive, team-based approach, the majority of our health care workforce has not received training on working together to provide effective integrated services6.

Training and education programs that are focused on integration are emerging. More than 90 are listed in our Programs section.

Latest News

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) released in March 2015 new training recommendations calling for residency programs to educate the next generation of psychiatrists in integrated behavioral health care. These training recommendations inform all spans of a practicing or prospective psychiatrist’s education, including undergraduate and graduate medical education as well as continuing medical education.

Despite increasing awareness of integrated behavioral health and primary care, little is known about the distribution of integration across the United States. Currently, there is a lack of information at the state and national levels about:

Demonstrated workforce competencies are essential to successfully meet both patient and provider needs and cost constraints in integrated primary care settings. Since 2007, approximately 1,500 health care professionals have received this specialized training through The Certificate Program in Primary Care Behavioral Health at the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Integrated Primary Care.

Expert Insight

Sandra Bailly, M.S.W, of the Simmons School of Social Work, interviewed Alexander Blount, Ed. D., Director of the Center for Integrated Primary Care at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. This interview outlines what social work students should expect when learning about the practice of integrated primary care, as well as the training implications for those in that field. Dr. Blount says that social workers and primary care providers (PCPs) face many of the same challenges because the majority of behavioral health issues will only ever be treated in the primary care setting.

In response to the demand for behavioral health providers in primary care, initiatives have developed which attempt to provide training for the established behavioral health workforce to enable their successful integration into primary care settings. The need to address this workforce shortage continues to grow as behavioral health services in primary care become more widely implemented. In this article Dr. Alexander Blount of the NIAC, expresses the importance of training for behavioral health providers in primary care.